Apple clearly doesn’t like people screwing around with its hardware. And the computer giant’s latest effort to keep people out of the iPhone’s innards is, apparently, replacing standard Phillips-head screws with ones that are almost impossible for ordinary people to remove.
That’s what two people “with firsthand knowledge of the practice” told Reuters, and Kyle Wiens of iFixIt, a California company that fixes iPhones and supplies parts, told the news service that the idea behind it is to keep people from changing the phone’s battery on their own. Apple charges $79 for a replacement battery, but they are sold on eBay for $5 or less.
Changing the battery or touchscreen is the primary, if not the only, reason for an average iPhone user to open the device, since it doesn’t contain a SIM card that can be replaced to switch the phone to another carrier.
The process of jailbreaking, or tampering with the device to change its functionality, is done with software and doesn’t require hardware changes. There are numerous videos on YouTube explaining how to dismantle the various iPhone models.
Quality, and Revenue Control
The pentalobe screws Apple is inserting first appeared on the battery section of a MacBook Pro in 2009, Wiens told Reuters, and they are also used in the MacBook Air.
Apple didn’t respond to our request for comment.
But technology analyst Rob Enderle speculated that the change likely has more than one purpose.
“There is probably a method to their madness,” he said. “If they control the process [of repairs], they can assure the quality of the result. The iPhone has one of the highest customer-satisfaction rates of any product, and they want to keep it that way. People tend to get more upset about breakage than they do about losing control of access to the inside of the device.”
Enderle said it’s…